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Mercedes S 600 L

This is the future of cars ... oh dear

Modern history is littered with glorious technical failures. Huge new leaps that got the full backing of Judith Hann on Tomorrow's World and then wound up as an oxbow lake, stagnating as the river of progress found a new and better course. You may, for instance, remember the laser disc. It was a 1ft-wide silver record which, said the geeks, would replace the videocassette. I damn nearly bought one, at vast expense, even though there were a few drawbacks. Like you couldn't record anything on it, and any fast-moving image always "ghosted", which was a bit of a problem because the only film originally available on laser disc was the very fast-moving Top Gun. Before this, there was the saga of Betamax. Technically superior to the standard videocassette, it is still used by television companies as the medium on which programmes are recorded. Many people bought Beta machines, but then